The Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan is a classic example of the globalisation/glocalisation trend in jazz today. As he showed on the album Aratta Rebirth: Red Hail (2009), he has mastered the American jazz tradition (the influence of globally transmitted US jazz), but his original compositions on this album are strongly influenced by his ‘local’ Armenian folk tradition (scales and modes) to reflect ‘local’ identity, thus the interaction between the globally transmitted American style is localised – or glocalised – by way of the folkloric influences unique to Armenia. When we look at the trend we see it is producing a series of unique outcomes in different locations that are geographically and culturally specific – Armenian jazz, Brazilian jazz, Nigerian Highlife jazz, Norwegian jazz, South African Township jazz, Swedish jazz, Dutch jazz, Transylvanian jazz, French jazz and so on. This trend towards glocalisation represents a major evolutionary shift in jazz since these various glocalised forms contain properties that are not present in the American version and it is these differences that are attracting attention in a music that has seen no significant evolutionary trend since the 1970s. Thus, it can be argued that musicians such as Hamasyan are at the forefront of this trend, since An Ancient Observer is based on Armenian melodies in the same way the classic 1964 example of Nordic Jazz glocalisation, Jan Johansson's Jazz på Svenska, was based on Swedish folk tunes taken from the national folkloric collection Svenska låtar. Some pieces on Hamasyan's album are through-composed and played as is, while most have space for improvisation and, though we hear discreet influences of hip hop or baroque on one or two tunes, it is the sounds of his native country that prevail, where his daily life has inspired his musical vision: “I gaze out of my window and see the biblical mountain Ararat with perpetual snow on its peak, with electrical towers with wires in the foreground cutting the picture and satellite dishes melded onto old and modern houses… I can see and observe the same birds, animals, rivers, mountains that craftsmen of 4,000 years ago painted on a clay vessel.” Yep. This is localised jazz alright, and its compelling, moving, and powerful.